A key motivation in including these sections is reflective of a complaint often heard in our public culture: "One of the most common complaints about young people is their lack of participation in our democracy" (Fassett, Warren, & Nainby, 2018, p. 13). The authors go on to say that advocacy is a key element not only in getting young people engaged in politics and civic awareness, but also in helping people learn how to speak up for themselves and others within our public communication frameworks. If a person or group of people are seeking to change something about society and culture, they need to find a means of doing so that reach audiences and generate enough interest to promote the possibility of change.
Advocacy is, in many ways, a sales pitch for an idea, a product, a legal right, or a specific need (Daly, 2011). It can also be about championing a cause (Mattson & Lam, 2016; Wilkins, 2014). Reaching the audience effectively is a necessary component of compelling advocacy.
Victor Hugo was wrong when he wrote that an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped. Ideas can be stopped. Too often, brilliant ideas flounder because of the inability or unwillingness of their creators to sell them to others. Indeed, how many great ideas for lifesaving drugs, world-changing technologies, and innovative business processes have fallen by the wayside simply because their proponents were unable to successfully advocate for their adoption? (Daly, 2011, p. 4)
Advocacy is therefore a type of strategic communication process (Wilkins, 2014), or goal-oriented communication (Falkheimer & Heide, 2018). Strategic communication is a merging of business strategy, persuasion, and outreach to generate action, behavior, or understanding on the part of an audience (Connolly-Ahern, 2008). This type of communication is always built around a specified purpose or goal (Falkheimer & Heide, 2018; Hallahan, Hotzhausen, van Ruler, Verčič, & Sriramesh, 2007).
The Process of Advocating
The goal of advocacy in any form is to promote change and to allow voices that are otherwise silenced to be heard. Everyone has problems, and everyone experiences issues that they need help with. Most people in the world, however, have no real ability to voice their concerns in a manner through which they can be heard. This is a primary reason why advocacy is significant—to help voice concerns that are otherwise unheard. Advocacy and activism happen through a number of different channels and utilize a number of different communication processes. The ultimate goal is to reach an audience with the ability to draw that audience into the issue and help them become, at least, marginal participants in the process.
There are three common types of public advocates: self advocates who are able to promote themselves (Borofka, Boren, & Ellingson, 2015; Ramos Salazar 2018; Wright, Frey, & Sopory, 2007), peer advocates (Gustafson, et. al., 2005; Nelson, 2015) who promote the needs of those with little opportunity to be able to speak for themselves, and civic advocates, who promote social and cultural values to promote societal change (Löblich, 2015; Olson, 2008; Paz, 2016). Self advocates are able to speak for themselves, they have access to the mechanisms that can help them create change (Borofka, Boren, & Ellingson, 2015; Wright, Frey, & Sopory, 2007). This includes students with access to student government, student newspapers, and other means of voicing their concerns. It also includes workers with union or other representation on the job, citizens willing to write or call a congressperson, and anyone able to write a blog, letter to the editor, or other means of using media to get their voices out there and heard.
Peer advocates work to voice concerns for other people (Gustafson, et. al., 2005; Nelson, 2015). This includes social workers, politicians, lawyers, union leaders, neighborhood watch members, multicultural and women's rights representatives on campus or in a business, and other people who choose to be actively involved in promoting needs within groups and organizations. Civic advocates similarly work to change the status of individuals who may be unable to self-advocate, but these advocates are also aiming at larger public impact and getting messages out to wide audiences. Civic advocates are often also called activists, but this label can be appleid to any of the types of advocates mentioned if they focus on messages reaching large audiences (Smith & Ferguson, 2018). In any of these cases, those of us with the ability to self-advocate, or to advocate for others, need to find a way to do so that is inviting to our intended audience.
Types of Advocacy
Among the more prominent methods of public advocacy is narrative advocacy, or telling the story of a problem (Ellingson, 2017). Narratives get the attention of the audience effectively and addressing variable narrative can be a key means of advocating for change. Personal testimony is often a means of engaging the audience in the narrative (Kahn & Fábos, 2017). For example:
The popular narrative of cancer foregrounds a fierce medical battle waged by brave patients and heroic care providers, resulting in spectacular biotechnological warfare....Individual survivors construct narratives that typically feature a frightening diagnosis, knowledgeable physicians, aggressive treatment, and either a triumphant recovery and return to normal life (i.e. a restitution narrative) or a tragic death....Cancer survivorship research conclusively demonstrates that illness stories for most survivors do not end so tidily, however....Despite the material reality...a heroic story structure organizes public discourse surrounding cancer. (Ellingson, 2019, p. 321)
Cancer advocates use this narrative to sell the need for cancer screenings, diagnosis, and treatment (Ellingson, 2017; King, 2006). The narrative may only illustrate part of the story, but it focuses on a compelling one with heroic themes that encourages audiences to pay attention. Narratives of bullying are another common form of narrative advocacy.
Narrative advocacy is commonly used in public service announcements, muckracking, human interest news stories, and by advertisers and political spin doctors hoping to garner support for their product or political candidate (Kahn & Fábos, 2017). It's also a common form of advocacy used by news media and documentary and other filmmakers to promote social change (Crow & Lawlor, 2016; Gonzalez-Polledo & Tarr, 2016). In this process, the advocate tells the story, using emotional language and other forms of emotional appeal, to encourage the audience to relate to the characters in the story.
Another common form of advocacy happens because of what folklorist Victor Turner (1974, 1980) refers to as social drama. A social drama is a breach in normal activities: one that can be easily noticed and referenced by an audience, one that shocks the audience into feeling the need to act. The impact of the planes hitting the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 was as much an emotional shock as it was a literal impact in our culture. Another more recent example is the impact of school shootings throughout the US, and the responses of advocate and activist groups around the nation. This is a performative process, and reflects performance theories as well as narrative approaches to advocacy.
The social drama invokes storytelling and other cultural performances. Think about the celebrity concerts after 9-11 and hurricane relief efforts, concerts that raised awareness and money to help the survivors and deal with the devastation. Or consider the narratives and celebrity involvement in the #MeToo movement. And the story told in each case isn't just the story of the victims and the survivors--it's the story of the United States and it's ability to re-create itself. That's a story with a profound cultural appeal in this nation.
A final form of advocacy to discuss in this module is collaborative advocacy. This means that advocates do best when they focus on understanding the positions of everyone involved in a conflict, rather than aggressively taking sides or positions (Ganesh & Zoller, 2012; Spicer, 2007). While narrative advocacy is aimed primarily at large audiences we hope to sway to a particular point of view on a topic, or hope to educate about a particular concern, collaborative advocacy is about working through issues to the benefit of all parties concerned in a conflict or a dispute. These include the advocates who work in child services, criminal justice, divorce courts, and other similar areas. Politicians also often have to communicate in this fashion when advocating for a cause, though this process can get lost when narratives become prevalent in the political arena. Some might argue ultimately the narratives of Left and Right, or Democrat and Republican, that have gotten in the way of collaboration in recent years.
Regardless of the approach, whether you aim for confrontation or collaboration when trying to create change, the primary thing that an advocate must do is speak up, and make themselves heard.
Strategic Communication
Strategic communication is a label that has been applied to a number of different types of strategies and communication plans. One of the earliest applications of the label was to military and government communication processes, particularly in the US, and the affiliated Public Affairs staff (Connolly-Ahern, 2008; Holtzhausen & Zerfass, 2014; Paul, 2011).
Strategic communication is the purposeful communication by a person or an organization designed to persuade audiences with the goal of increasing knowledge, changing attitudes, or inducing desired behavior. Strategic communication campaigns are generally designed to respond to the perceived communications needs of significant publics. The term was originally associated with U.S. governmental communications directed toward audiences outside the United States. However, the use of the term has expanded and is now commonly used to describe the overall communications efforts of both individuals and organizations, including political candidates. (Connolly-Ahern, 2008, p. 765).
The role of persuasion in strategic communication is generally as the intent of the message. Propaganda is a clear example of persuasive strategic communication (Paul, 2011).
Branding is a major component of strategic communication (Hallahan, Hotzhausen, van Ruler, Verčič, & Sriramesh, 2007). There is a key relationship between corporate branding and a company's strategic communication, particularly in terms of audience recognition (Foreman & Argenti, 2005). Audiences are drawn to the familiarity of the brand, and through that process they can relate to new information or new ideas. Consider, for example, commercials for well-recognized brands, such as Nike. Fans of Nike will be drawn to the effective emotional pull of the brand and logo. This form of strategic communication can aid in selling new items to that audience (Ratnatunga & Ewing, 2005). It can also increase participation by fans or those interested in interacting with the brand or corporation (Uzunoğlu & Kip, 2014). Activist branding works along similar lines, and can build interaction with potential participants and donors (Saxton, Niyirora, Guo, & Waters, 2015).
Strategic narratives are a type of strategic communication commonly found in political communication. Politicians and government agents use strategic narratives shape public attitudes or promote a particular ideology (Archetti, 2013; Hellman & Wagnsson, 2015; Roselle, Miskimmon, & O’Loughlin, 2014; Schmid, 2014). These narratives are carefully planned stories designed to draw an audience in and get them to believe in and support government institutions (Archetti, 2013; Roselle et al., 2014). Strategic narratives, like narrative advocacy, reflect Fisher’s (1984) narrative theory that stories are more persuasive than pulbic arguments. Strategic narratives are used by activists and propagandists as well as government authorities (Roselle et al., 2014). These groups also often aim their strategic narratives at specific audience consumers, raising their visibility to the audience through the compelling aspects of the story.
Ultimately, strategic communication and advocacy are forms of rhetoric as public communication and public argument. The strategic nuances of these current forms of public messaging maintain the persuasive goals of rhetoric as described by Plato and Aristotle. As activism, journalism, and other forms of public argument become more digitized and interactive, the need for more and constant study of these processes will continue. And as more ideological divides occur among consumer groups, the need for public argument that can reach across divides continues to grow.
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